User Profile

Still enjoying this series.

Books in this genre don't often surprise me. This one did, several times. (It's true, the primary surprise in the book was not a surprise, but you can only read so many witch/vampire/werewolf books before you hit all the tropes.)

If you're into urban fantasy, I definitely recommend picking this one up. It's kind of late-YA/NA, I guess?

I think I'm done with this series. Meh.

I really enjoyed this and am looking forward to its sequel. I guess it's technically urban fantasy, although it has a different feel (and a different intended audience, I suspect). I like that there's practically no romantic subplot, and the protagonist is both female and believable. There are some inescapable comparisons to be made with Jim Hines's Libriomancer series, and although I'm further into that and should perhaps not compare, so far I like this better. (Both are really enjoyable, though!)

Wow, this is very YA, in some respects. The teenage-girl-in-love passages have me rolling my eyes pretty regularly. That said, I do like that we're getting into an "are they all monsters or not?" situation with the vampires--that's sort of the whole point of this genre, in my opinion, and it makes me happy when a series explores that, instead of just making them pure monstrosities or sexy brooding guys.

[spoiler below]

[CW: rape] And then someone hands the main character a pre-opened water bottle at a party, and I think to myself "No, this is YA." I'm wrong, though. And while the would-be rapists' plans end up being foiled, I still found myself, an adult woman, pretty shaken.

I'll keep reading the series, for now, but I could easily be talked into dropping it, too.

The audiobook was performed well. It's very YA, very vampire fiction. The vampires are the bad guys, not the love interests, so that's cool.

I like Cormac (though, because there's something horribly wrong with me, I keep mixing him up with Ted Forrester from the Anita Blake series, which doesn't make much sense, because Cormac isn't a sociopath). I hope the series doesn't switch away from Kitty's POV for very long, but this was still a good read/listen.

If you've ever had an eating disorder, this book is going to be incredibly triggering. She describes binges in ridiculous detail.

It feels really different from her other books, swapping points of view between characters, and the plot meanders all over the place. I like the main character, triggers notwithstanding.

Also, the audiobook switches voice actors based on who is narrating, and I very much don't like the male reader.

Although it shouldn't be, the narration is just as flat in this book as in the other. I feel like it must be a deliberate choice on the author's part, but who can say?

It's very much a second book in a series. (Maybe a trilogy. I bet it can all be wrapped up in one more book.)

Weird book (series, really, though I'm only through book 2). The protagonist and narrator is nearly emotionless, which gives the book a really flat quality that makes it hard to get into. The relationships don't feel real, with the exception of the one between the protagonist and a semi-antagonist of hers.

The metaphysics are interesting--apparently neo-Classical is "in," right now--and the plot moves really quickly. I read the second (for free with Amazon Prime), and if I can get the third for less than $5, I will probably read it.

Note: It should probably have a content warning for coercive relationships between male and female characters.

This series really is a Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Lord of the Flies read-alike, with some additional dystopian elements I can't quite place. It would appeal to fans of Divergent and Howey's Silo Saga, too, I suspect, though I hesitate to call it a "read-alike" for either one.

It's good, and although it's a very masculine-feeling book, with a male protagonist whose antagonists are mostly also male (and at least one woman in a refrigerator), Brown's female characters still feel like real people with their own goals.

It was probably stupid of me to read the second book now, when the third and final book isn't coming out for a while. Like any good middle book, it is (in some ways) darker and higher-stakes than its predecessor, and it ends (as it should) on a cliffhanger.